Introduction

More than 1 in 5 US adults live with a mental health illness and about 1 and 25 U.S adults lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. Mental health is a serious battle that nobody should fight alone. Talking to someone or psychiatrist, taking breaks from social media, eating healthy, going for walks, working out and getting enough sleep are all different ways to cope with stress. The Madison Borough Health Department is responsible for local public health efforts.

Data

The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducts a routine national survey known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS).  In partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the CDC released local level estimates on frequent mental health distress crude prevalence for 2020 to 2022.

Results

In Morris County, the estimated prevalence of lack of mental health among adults aged 18-64 years (%) was 13.1 with 95% CI (11.8, 14.5), and the age-adjusted prevalence (%) was 14.1 (12.7, 15.6) in 2022. According to the census 2022 county population estimates 407,308 adults aged >= 18 years living in Morris county. In the census tract with Drew University, the estimated prevalence of lack of mental health among adults aged 18-64 years (%) was 15.4 with 95% CI (13.9,16.9) in 2022. This was the highest prevalence in Madison. This is also higher than Morris county prevalence. according to the census 2020 there were 3,829 adults age >=18 years living in this area.

Conclusion

Understanding locational differences on mental health distress in the Madison Area lends insight to local and county health departments to see where targeted interventions can work to reduce mental health distress among adults. 

Health measures are also valuable in an area with a university to see how many young adults or students are being taken into account. We gain a sense of what is behind more of the mental health distress in Madison and Morris County. They contribute new operations and actions to take effect in the future. 

About the Data

The CDC Places data sets are part of a series, spelling out the acronym as Place Level Analysis and Community Estimates.  The latest estimates are for 2020 and 2022 for U.S. Census Tracts.

Other data sources visualized in the images here and on web maps are from the New Jersey Office of GIS (including County and Municipal Boundaries of New Jersey).

A web map of the county level PLACES results can be found here.

A web map of the census tract results for Madison can be found here.